Massalongia Körb.
Type : Massalongia carnosa (Dicks.) Körb. [=Lichen carnosus Dicks.]
Description : Thallus rosette-forming, squamulose, glaucous-grey, brown or red-brown with a pale lower surface, attached to substratum by brown or black rhizohyphae, without a prothallus. Lobes squamulose or elongated, ±phyllidiate–isidiate Upper cortex pseudoparenchymatous, medulla of loosely woven hyphae. Photobiont cyanobacterial, Nostoc. Ascomata apothecia, hemiangiocarpic, sessile to subpedicellate, laminal and marginal, with a proper exciple. Hypothecium colourless or pale. Thecium hyaline, brownish in upper parts, I+ deep blue. Hamathecium of paraphyses, septate, simple or branched. Asci cylindrical with apically thickened walls, 8-spored. Ascospores colourless, polymorphic, ellipsoidal to fusiform, 1–3-septate. Conidiomata pycnidia, ostiole brown, punctiform. Conidiophores short-celled, branched. Conidia produced laterally and terminally, colourless, bacillar to ±dumbell-shaped, 2–6 × 1 μm.
Massalongia, honouring the Veronese lichenologist Abramo Bartolomeo Massalongo (1824–1860), is a genus of two species (Kirk et al. 2001), one bipolar, the other restricted to North America (Henssen 1963a; Goward et al. 1994b), and of uncertain taxonomic position. The genus is discussed in detail by Henssen (1963a) who placed it in the family Peltigeraceae, but Jørgensen (in Hawksworth 1994: 390) disputes this noting... " I ...feel that it should be transferred [out of the Peltigeraceae] as the ascus structure is quite different and nothing else correlates it with Peltigerales in my opinion". It is included in the family Massalongiaceae (Wedin et al. 2007). One species is found in mountainous areas of southern New Zealand. M. novozelandica C.W.Dodge (Dodge (1971: 463–464) is probably referable to Psoroma, but type material has not yet been located or examined.
